re merged in a fatalistic
acceptance of his will. It was not that she felt in him any ascendancy
of character--there were moments already when she knew she was the
stronger--but that all the rest of life had become a mere cloudy rim
about the central glory of their passion. Whenever she stopped thinking
about that for a moment she felt as she sometimes did after lying on the
grass and staring up too long at the sky; her eyes were so full of light
that everything about her was a blur.

Each time that Miss Hatchard, in the course of her periodical incursions
into the work-room, dropped an allusion to her young cousin, the
architect, the effect was the same on Charity. The hemlock garland she
was wearing fell to her knees and she sat in a kind of trance. It was
so manifestly absurd that Miss Hatchard should talk of Harney in
that familiar possessive way, as if she had any claim on him, or knew
anything about him. She, Charity Royall, was the only being on earth
who really knew him, knew him from the soles of his feet to the rumpled
crest of his hair, knew the shifting lights in his eyes, and the
inflexions of his voice, and the things he liked and disliked,
and everything there was to know about him, as minutely and yet
unconsciously as a child knows the walls of the room it wakes up in
every morning. It was this fact, which nobody about her guessed,
or would have understood, that made her life something apart and
inviolable, as if nothing had any power to hurt or disturb her as long
as her secret was safe.

The room in which the girls sat was the one which had been Harney's
bedroom. He had been sent upstairs, to make room for the Home Week
workers; but the furniture had not been moved, and as Charity sat there
she had perpetually before her the vision she had looked in on from the
midnight garden. The table at which Harney had sat was the one about
which the girls were gathered; and her own seat was near the bed on
which she had seen him lying. Sometimes, when the others were not
looking, she bent over as if to pick up something, and laid her cheek
for a moment against the pillow.

Toward sunset the girls disbanded. Their work was done, and the next
morning at daylight the draperies and garlands were to be nailed up, and
the illuminated scrolls put in place in the Town Hall. The first guests
were to drive over from Hepburn in time for the midday banquet under
a tent in Miss Hatchard's field; and after that the ceremoni